August 17, 2012

The Annual Cycle of Global and Asian Fatal Landslides

This video shows the annual cycle of global and Asian fatal landslides (for the full dataset described in the research paper). They have been divided into the 52 weeks of the year — for each week the map shows all of the landslides that occurred in that week of the year for the full dataset. Each dot is a single landslide. Note that in the early part of the year the focus is on South and Central America; in the middle part of the year (weeks 20 to 40) the focus shifts to Asia. In the first part of the northern hemisphere summer (weeks 20 to 30 or so) the landslides mostly occur in South Asia, later on this shifts to China. At the end of the year the concentration moves to Southeast Asia. This pattern reflects the global cycle of continental scale rainfall events, especially the Asian monsoon, which is mostly responsible for the triggering of landslides that kill people.